Between the end of autumn
harvest distribution in December and the following March, Chosun People’s Army servicemen must endure
the bitterness of winter training drills.
Of course, reserve forces such as Worker and Peasant Red Guards must also train, but, with
the exception of a handful of field exercises, they are permitted to remain
home and take part in “blackout training” events only.
Conversely, soldiers are required to participate in the notorious drills, all the while carrying equipment weighing upward of
30kg. Some units even load up soldiers’ packs with sandbags if the equipment itself is
considered too light.
Food is limited for
the training soldiers. After intense training a body requires nutritional
sustenance, but ongoing food insecurity means that even eggs are hard to come
by, much less meat. As a result, soldiers tend to be in a state of complete fatigue by the
end of the four-month training period.
As a coping mechanism
against this state of affairs, hungry soldiers steal food and livestock
from local villages, one former North Korean now residing in the South
recalled to Daily NK.
“As they ambushed and stole from gardens on cooperative farms, the soldiers would make comments such as ‘the military are sons
of the people, so farmers’ gardens are our gardens.’ Even though they are going
around pillaging people’s houses in broad daylight, they are still the ‘sons of the people’ so
they ‘can’t be classed as thieves,’” he said. “If they take grain from
cooperative farms they will again repeat that they are ‘their gardens.’”
The root of the pretext for this thievery is an official slogan; “The Military Are Sons of the People,” which is attributed to
Kim Il Sung. During his spell as an anti-Japanese partisan in China in the
1930s, the North Korean founder supposedly declared that commanders are also “sons
of the people.” The North Korean
authorities have always encouraged the nation’s people to lay down their lives and
property in defense of the military, but following the onset of the food crisis
of the mid-1990s this reasoning became a pretext for seizing the property of ordinary civilians.
Similarly, the
official slogan “The Communal Garden Is My Garden” was introduced to
persuade people to care for their communal gardens as they would their own. But this
slogan has also become an pretext for, used when stealing grain from farming
cooperatives. Even ordinary people can sometimes be heard to repeat this missive when caught stealing.
The Arduous March and
economic collapse of the 1990s was disastrous for the North Korean military, as
food and supplies could no longer be guaranteed by the state. Predictably,
discipline slackened and soldiers, no longer able to bear the cold and hunger, turned
to stealing animals and food from nearby villages.
This soon became
universal practice. Fearing harassment, terrified villagers would let the
soldiers get away with it, the source testified.
“Far from feeling a pang of conscience, the soldiers would instead go
around in packs making off with the livestock and food supplies of ordinary
households. Even if the security forces were in the area, they would pay
no heed. Anyone who lashed out at this loss of their property would be
assaulted; some even lost their lives.”
